SC - information access / Hungarian cuisine

[Thomas Gloning]

"Of course, many other people are able to use the collection for various
research projects." This is quoted from an article by Louis Szathmary
about "The Szathmary Culinary Archives", a collection of about 18.000
cookbooks and related culinary material. If I understood correctly, part
of this collection was donated to the University of Iowa and is now part
of their special collections; the other part seems to be housed "above
my restaurant (The Bakery) in Chicago" (I may have got that wrong).

The Szathmary collection seems to be especially strong in Hungarian
cookbooks ("... contains just about every cookbook ever printed in
Hungary"). Szathmary says that Marx Rumpolt (the author of the famous
'Ein new Kochbuch', 1581) is an Hungarian. I didn't recall that, so I
reread Rumpolt's preface. Rumpolt says, that he was "an vieler Herrn
Höfen" and that he learned about the cuisines of "Jtalien/ Niderlanden/
Reussen/ Preussen/ Polen/ Vngern/ Böhem/ Osterreich vnd Teutschlandt".
And, yes, he says that he is "ein geborner Vnger", who had to leave the
land when he was young because of the Turkish invasion in that time.

Thus, it seems to me that we can take Rumpolt's recipes 'in an Hungarian
style' to be somewhat more close to Hungarian cuisine than the Hungarian
style recipes of other collections.

Louis Szathmary mentions another interesting document in his collection:
"a leather-covered document, handwritten on vellum in Hungary circa
1490".

Looking from Europe, it seems that Chicago has at least two good
culinary collections to visit (the other one being the John Crerar
Library). If I ever drop by there ...

Here is the URL of the four pages portrait of "The Szathmary Culinary
Archives":

    http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/Bai/szathmary.htm

Have fun,
Thomas
(I am still collecting 'Hungarian recipes from non-Hungarian sources' to
put on the web sometimes in the new year; contributions are welcome.)

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